Moscow/New Delhi: As Twitter fights new IT rules in India amid an intense scrutiny of its platform, a local court in Russia has fined Twitter 19 million rubles (about $259,000) for its failure to remove banned content, including calls for unauthorised protests, increasing fines on the company to 27.9 million rubles ($380,000).
Twitter was fined $121,000 in early April for the same offense in Russia.
Earlier this week, Moscow court fined Facebook and Google on similar charges, reports Xinhua news agency.
Meanwhile, the Indian government has hit back hard at Twitter’s latest statement raising concerns over the ‘potential threat’ to freedom of speech, saying that the microblogging platform is trying to dictate its terms in India, and also wants to undermine the country’s legal system.
The IT ministry said that Twitter refuses to comply with those very regulations in the new intermediary guidelines on the basis of which it is claiming a safe harbour protection from any criminal liability in India.
Referring to the statement, wherein Twitter stressed on the need of a collaborative approach and a collective responsibility of elected officials, industry and civil society to safeguard the interests of the public, the IT Ministry said: “It is time Twitter disabuses itself of this grandiosity and comply with the laws of India”.
With WhatsApp suing the Indian government over the new IT rules for social media platforms, Twitter has requested the IT Ministry to consider a minimum of three-month extension in order for the company to implement the new intermediary guidelines.
On Monday, Delhi Police visited Twitter India’s local offices in the National Capital Region after Twitter had marked one of the tweets of BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra as “manipulated media”.
Twitter’s presumptive judgement has triggered widespread outrage among Indian users across the country.